


Two Left

by wesleysgirl



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:43:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleysgirl/pseuds/wesleysgirl





	Two Left

It's just the two of them now.

John thinks about it a lot; Atlantis, alone, the city slowly shutting itself down until it's asleep again, going back to the way its been all these years past. He thinks about everything they left behind. It makes him feel sad and sick, knowing that everyone's gone and that the city is empty, its power and mysteries lost, maybe never to be found again.

They'd always thought it would be the Wraith that would destroy them. They'd been so very, very wrong.

The sickness spreads through the city like wildfire -- no amount of antibiotics, antiseptics, or antivirals can touch it. It eats flesh and bone until the body can't sustain life, then moves on to the next victim before the previous one even realizes he's infected. Carson does his best to bioengineer a cure, even with one leg half eaten away by the necrotizing virus.

"I can't figure out what the bloody thing _is_ ," Beckett tells them from the infirmary, his voice shaking. He dies six days in from major organ failure, unable to pass on whatever he's been able to figure out in the time he's been looking for a solution.

The Athosians aren't able to identify the illness any more than Atlantis' scientists are, and they die just as quickly.

John tries not to think about that.

When the Daedalus arrives, John and Rodney are the only ones left alive. They're quarantined, of course, because assuming that they're carrying whatever it is is the only safe thing to do, and it's not until twelve days into the journey back to Earth that they discover that they aren't as untouched as they thought.

It's just a scratch, McKay insists. A paper cut. That's all. John can see the truth in McKay's eyes, though, and in the way the doctors interact with them, suddenly becoming twice as careful as they were before, meticulously inspecting their suits outside the doors before stepping into the chamber that separates the quarantined med lab from the rest of the ship.

John waits to get infected, himself. Through the decontamination attempts and the surgeries and McKay's screams and his own restless dreams, he waits.

John waits for Rodney to die.

Somehow, through what has to be fate, because the doctors don't think it's anything they've done, Rodney lives.

So does John.

Three weeks later, back on Earth and with the officials no wiser than when the first death occurred, they let John in to see him. Until yesterday, McKay's been in some kind of oxygen chamber -- something about trying to kill off the bacteria, although John's not sure how oxygen is supposed to do that. Now McKay's in a room just like the one John's been in for weeks.

"Hi, Rodney," he says. He feels awkward, doesn't know what to do with his hands.

"Hi." McKay's eyes are narrow, and his nose looks pointier than ever in his thinner face. "How's life outside these walls?"

"Oh, you know." John shrugs and looks around the room. "Pretty much the same." He nods at a painting on the wall of a little girl playing tug of war with a puppy. "Mine's got a kid on the beach. With seagulls."

McKay nods. "And you?"

John doesn't know how to answer that. What the hell is he supposed to do? Admit to the nightmares that send him from deep sleep to gasping, sweat-soaked wakefulness? Describe how sometimes he turns around expecting to see one of them -- Elizabeth, Carson, Teyla -- and all he can see is what they looked like after they were dead?

He's the walking wounded, haunted by phantoms, and he's still better off than McKay, who watches him with a knowing expression.

"You know," John says, with a little shrug.

"Yeah."

McKay's room is just as devoid of personal items as John's is. "They took your stuff?" John asks. "I thought they were going to ask me to turn around and bend over, they were so worried about me having anything that might be contaminated."

"Yes," McKay says, grimacing. "Regular search and seizure. They even took the laptop they were letting me use on the Daedalus, which is ridiculous because they could have..." He stops suddenly, his eyes suspiciously bright. "Not that it matters now," he says roughly.

For a while, they talk about what John's going to do when he gets out of here, assuming he ever does. For all he knows, they might both be kept locked up in this hospital forever. "They'll have to build another one eventually," John says.

"Another what?" McKay asks.

"Hospital," John explains. "For whoever lives in this town. People still get sick, you know."

"Yeah," McKay says flatly. "People get sick. People get sick all the time."

It makes John angry, and not just because everyone in Atlantis is dead. He's pissed off that he lived and doesn't know why, and he's mad that Rodney got sick just when he'd started to hope that they'd both escaped judgment. But now he adds a new reason to be angry to the list -- the fact that it sounds like McKay is giving up, and that tells John why the doctors have finally allowed this visit.

"Sometimes they get better," John says.

"Sometimes." McKay looks down at his lap, covered over with a thin cotton hospital blanket just like the one in John's room.

John swallows and doesn't look. "We're gonna be okay, Rodney," he says, trying to believe it.

"Oh, yes, easy for you to say, considering you never got sick," McKay snaps. "Please, shower me with some more words of wisdom."

"I wish I could," John says, heartfelt. "I wish... well. I just wish none of this ever happened."

"That makes two of us," Rodney says, and looks down again at the bandaged stumps of his arms, the gauze startlingly white against the blue of the blanket.


End file.
